


The Thing He Carries

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-13
Updated: 2009-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Don doesn't think about it much, but he knows exactly where it is.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing He Carries

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Charlie, Don, and _Numb3rs_ belong to Cheryl Heuton, Nicolas Falacci, and some people at CBS who aren't me.
> 
> Beta thanks to Iulia!
> 
> This story was first posted July 12, 2006.

Don doesn't think about it much, but he knows exactly where it is. It's a little knot just below his stomach, guarded by his ribs, tucked away like a lump of scar tissue or some mutant organ. He doesn't think about it any more than he thinks about his spleen or his bones. It's just there. It's just a part of him.

It crosses his mind when he's learning to wear a vest, learning to run and shoot with that weight around him. The vest covers him just past the spot; he can't be shot there when he wears it. Later, dazed with exhaustion, bruised and scraped and falling into bed at the end of another long day at Quantico, Don curls up on his side, hiding that spot against the mattress, and wonders why that's a comfort, why that's any different from knowing he won't be shot in the heart or could be shot in the leg. Maybe if he were shot there the thing that hides in him would be obliterated by the bullet, replaced with a scar he can tell stories about.

But on the edge of sleep Don thinks that if the skin and bone that hide it were broken, it would escape him in a gush of blood, causing more damage on its way out than the bullet on its way in. Like one of those ancient arrowheads or a barbed fishhook--and then the thought slips away from him altogether, and when he wakes up it's another day of learning to be an Agent. His body--sore but strong--is just his body again.

He knows it's real, because he can feel it sometimes. It's a small thing, but heavy, and if he bends the wrong way he can feel it pressing against his ribs. When Coop punches him there, playfully, Don hits back hard, and they fight for real, briefly vicious. Then they fall apart, catching their breath, and Coop grins and says, "What's got into you, Eppes?" and Don isn't even thinking of what's in him anymore. He grins and shrugs, and the fight is over, and Coop doesn't hit that spot again.

Kim tries to tickle him there, and Don pushes her away too hard. She tries to kiss him there and he flinches; she looks up at him with dark eyes, watching him for a moment before she moves lower. He doesn't ever tell her why--they don't ever fight--but by the time he leaves for LA she's stopped trying to touch that spot. When he calls her to tell her it's over, Don thinks maybe it was inevitable.

Sitting in a hospital room watching his mother die, Don is more conscious of his own body than he's ever been. Watching his mother waste away, he feels the solidity of his bones, the strength of his muscles, the persistence of his own heart. He feels the thing inside, too. Suddenly he wants to ask her if this is what it's like, if having cancer is like having a secret: this malignant intruder lurking in your body, lethal and strange, and made up entirely of yourself. But his mother is sleeping, and anyway he could never really ask.

Don and his father and brother barely touch at the funeral; they stand neatly spaced in a little row, one two three in order of age, height, grief. Charlie spends most of the service staring off into space, looking so blank and distant that Don wonders if he even really knows what's going on. Two days later, stopping by to check on his dad, Don gets his answer: Charlie is sitting at the dining room table, his face in his hands, his fingers wet with tears. Don stares, paralyzed, and wants to move closer, but he's suddenly conscious of the thing inside him. If he went to Charlie now--knelt beside him, hugged him, if he even spoke--it would touch him just there, and he doesn't know what might happen next. Don backs up as far as the door in silence, and sits on the porch until his dad gets home. When they go inside together, Charlie is gone. They can hear him faintly, out in the garage, and for the first time in months--maybe in his entire life--the tapping of chalk makes Don feel safe instead of angry.

It's more than a year later, after dinner around the same dining room table, that his father declares that it is Charlie's turn to do the dishes. "My turn?" Charlie says, "How is it my turn? Why isn't it Don's turn? He's been eating here every night for a week."

Don's had a couple of beers with dinner, and blames his poor tactics on alcohol when he hears himself say, "Hey, I'm a guest."

"A guest?" his father repeats, eyebrows climbing, giving Don a stare that pins him to his seat. "Oh, my son, you are never a guest in this house." Don thinks of grumbling, but his father adds to Charlie, "He can help you, homeowner. Just try not to flood the kitchen this time, would you?"

Don laughs, but Charlie seems genuinely outraged. "Dad, I was five and Don was ten!"

"Ahh, but the memory doesn't fade," their father says, getting up from the table. "And neither do the high-water marks on the cabinets. Good luck, boys."

Don gets up as their father abandons them for the cool evening breeze on the porch, and Charlie follows him into the kitchen with an armload of things for the sink. It happens just like that; he's standing there rinsing plates, and Charlie squeezes beside him to lower a few more dishes under the water. As he pulls his hand back it brushes--wet, warm, careless--against Don's left side, just below his stomach, and Don's breath catches.

He looks at Charlie, and Charlie frowns at him. Charlie doesn't know what's there, of course, doesn't know where Don keeps it. But he knows what it is: it's a night when Charlie was seventeen, thunderstorms and cheap beer and the living room floor, their parents out at a friend's during the week they'd both come home. Just one night, just a small thing. Don turns away from Charlie's gaze, goes back to washing dishes, but Charlie touches him again, flattens his hand against Don's ribs, getting his shirt wet. Pressing up against Don's secret. Their secret.

Don shakes his head and elbows Charlie a little, but Charlie stands his ground, closing his fist in Don's shirt to anchor himself. "Charlie," Don says, and his voice shakes. His heart is pounding, and he can feel the thing he carries, trying to break free.

"_Oh_," Charlie says, like he's had some great revelation, and then his other hand is on Don's cheek, turning Don to face him. Don's not sure he can meet Charlie's eyes, but Charlie makes it easy, kissing him wet and warm and careful. Charlie's hand slides from his cheek to his shoulder, down his arm, tugging his hand from the sink. Don lets Charlie guide him until his own fingers are pressed to the base of Charlie's skull, the little hollow just below the bump at the back of his head, hidden under his hair.

Don pulls away from the kiss and looks down at Charlie, who has carried the same strange thing inside him, through all the same years. He rubs his fingertips against the spot on Charlie's head, and Charlie's thumb moves against his side, on the spot where Don hasn't let anyone touch him since then. As he leans down to kiss Charlie again, Don thinks maybe it was inevitable.


End file.
